All agents are trying to make a living by selling insurance.
Most agents are good people interested in helping others.
Many agents combine their need to make a living with their desire to help people by concentrating on selling clients coverage equal to what they already have at lower cost to the customer. These are the ‘Apples to Apples’ agents.
Some agents are insurance professionals who will analyze clients’ insurance needs and recommend the proper coverage even if it may cost more than the ‘cut-rate’ insurance they have previously been sold.
A few agents have achieved the ‘Self Actualization’ level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that satisfies the agent when he analyzes and recommends changes to a client’s coverages regardless of whether or not he sells the client an insurance product. These agents qualify for the Asset Protection Model of Relationship Selling (APM) that makes them the ultimate insurance counselors and consultants. They also happen to sell at a much higher rate than the traditional price-quoters.
For many years we have argued with the self-same agents who desire to identify their ‘Points of Differentiation’ from their direct writing and mass media competitors that their MOST IDENTIFIABLE Point of Differentiation should be the consultative approach to analyzing and helping their clients protect their assets. Anytime someone advertises products ‘in a box’ or over-simplifying insurance by stressing that lowering their cost should be their only concern it is an opportunity to convert a customer into a client by showing them any gaps in coverage that could risk their health, their family and their property for the cost of a few dollars.
Clients are quick to blame agents, the insurance companies and the world when they have sacrificed critically needed coverage to save a few dollars. Of course, we should just as carefully keep from over-insuring customers as we do from under-insuring them. But Risk Assessment should be our goal and APM agents build their entire practice around the mantra that we Assess and Analyze Risk, not Sell Insurance. The result of this attitude taught to and managed through ALL agency employees (not just the owner or producers) is a group of clients who feel about their agents as loyally as they feel for their family doctors.
How do your clients feel about YOUR agency? Of course your largest and most loyal and long-lasting clients are probably (or have become) your friends. But the key to your future success is more how the middle group of you clients (those between your top 10 clients and your bottom 80% of clients) feel about you and about your agency. Spend time in an annual risk analysis with this group of clients. The end result will be more referrals, more cross selling opportunities, less stress to quote and a more satisfying career for you and for your staff as you and they are treated more as the professionals that you are than as quoting machines who are trying to get the most money from your clients for insurance that is ‘all the same’. Your analysis will educate your clients in the personal and commercial lines of business that they have in their insurance portfolio. They will feel better that they are properly protected and will feel better about you and your staff as putting their interest above your own.